NW Cannabis Zone

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Cannabis Regulators: Who Watches The Watchers?

By Robert McVay on August 25, 2014
Posted in Business Basics, Legal Issues, Licensing

Owners of highly-regulated businesses know all too well that their regulators are human. We practice marijuana business law in a number of different states, all of which are highly regulated by one or more state agencies. And those agencies, and the people within them, make mistakes from time to time that directly impact our cannabis clients. Sometimes the errors are simple, like a lost document that we then need to resubmit, causing only a few days delay. Other times, the agency error’s consequences are more severe. In one case, a state agency three times approved one of our marijuana license applicant’s physical location, only to then be revoke the approval after discovering that the location was too close to a recreation center — a center for which we had specifically requested approval multiple times. The applicant had to move, after having already spent tens of thousands of dollars on build-out, most of which is unrecoverable.